Must-See Movies for the Black and/or "Feminist" Talented Tenth

thomas robinson tomrob at ccwebster.net
Sat Nov 11 23:56:15 PST 2000


John G on "Three Kings" : "Yeah, the ultimate agitprop for human rights interventionism..... Basically an ad for how Clinton foreign policy mythically presents itself, as opposed to the realities of Bush foreign policy."

Dennis P:" I thought "Three Kings" beautifully exposed the real policy behind the Gulf War, especially its aftermath, when the US allied itself with Saddam in order to suppress the Shia uprising in the south....to dismiss this film as "agitprop" for the bombing of Serbia is rather farfetched, in my view."

John G:" ... from what I recall the subtext of the film was that if the U.S. really cared about Wilsonian ethno-racial self-determination "we" should've stuck around and supported the mutineering officers and the Shia in Southern Iraq. Now don't get me wrong -- I'm not saying that if Clinton was commander-in-chief he would've done this, but he might have done something else (like not cease at the "Highway of Death") using the "plight" of the Shia and the Kurds as a pretext. So the film wasn't agitprop for what Clinton, Albright, Cohen etc. might have actually done, but for "human rights interventionism" which is their ideological alibi."

For what it's worth, the First Fan told Roger Ebert during a televised interview last winter that he really liked "Three Kings", because it showed how "we" abandoned the Shia after the war. Back in Ken Starr days, as I recall, Clinton told Gene Siskel and the tv audience that he really loved "High Noon" with its depiction of the lone courageous marshall against a gang of wild west bad guys.

Tom R.



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list